This thematic digital collection represents the continuation of large-scale preservation through digitization of recorded music in Burma/Myanmar. The purpose is to safeguard the earliest but endangered recorded musical traditions of Burma, and to offer an open access avenue through which contemporary Myanmar and the global community may access those musical traditions. The media digitized for this project, 78rpm records, date from those first produced by local Burmese recording companies in the early 1920s to the end of the 1950s. Covering the stylistic and tuning changes that shift from historic traditions to "international" standards by the 1960s, these recordings are significant as our only existing aural documentation of pre-industrial music in Burma.

Rights

The collection is fully composed of Burmese 78rpm recordings originally produced for commercial distribution by local Burmese recording companies between 1919-1962. However, none of these companies currently exist, and there has been no effort to market or maintain these recordings as commercially viable past the first few years of their original production date. Materials in the Collection are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. British Library, Endangered Archives Programme, EAP592. McConnell Library Archives and Special Collections, Radford University, Radford, VA). Any commercial use of the materials is subject to international intellectual property laws. Please refer to relevant resources provided by UNESCO and WIPO for more information.